New generation

I picked up my new generator yesterday but it needed some 10/30 oil and a new male plug. What I did not expect was it to have a socket on the side which is the 2 pin European TUV type socket. Luckily I had an adaptor, but I lacked a 3 pin male to make a fly lead so I had to wait til today to go to B & Q to get one. It also needs 10/30 oil although I could not find any anywhere. I decided to settle for some 10/40 as I’m unlikely to face dramatically cold temperatures anytime soon. £15 friggin’ quid for a litre of the oil! Seriously, they’re having a piggin’ laugh though! Greedy robbing bastards! but you see they know, if you want it, and need it, you will pay for it. And so works our great capitalist system.

Generator

But I digress: I got an old plastic carton and filled it with .4 of a litre of water as that is the generator’s stated oil capacity. I marked the level with a Sharpie, then emptied and dried it and filled it with oil to that level. I used the supplied funnel to fill the generator and it was precise. The oil just reached the very base of the threads that the dipstick screwed into: very neat.
I’d filled up with petrol the night before and although they say don’t brim it because of expansion, I’m a true rebel so I squeezed exactly 4 litres in instead of the recommended 3.80 litres. Blargh.

Filled with oil…Check!
Filled with petrol…Check!
Open air vent on petrol filler cap…check!
Choke out…Check!
Engine switch on…Check!
Economy mode switch on…Check!
Pulled the handle…nothing. That’s fine, petrol needs to get through. So I shoved the choke back in and gave it another pull and it started on the third pull. The green power light flashes for a few seconds then steadies and then you can plug stuff in.

I’d made the new fly lead so I plugged it in and instantly my Sterling charger came to life and after it’s internal start up check was complete it started charging. The 2 x 220 ahr batteries are down to about 12.1 volts, effectively flat, so I knew the charger would pull on the generator in order to bash a high charge out and sure enough it did.
Out of curiosity I switched economy mode off and of course the engine note got louder but still was not as loud as my old SDMO before it departed for the gennie heaven. On economy mode it was quieter still and yet powering the charger with no problem at all. One thing I noted was that to plug the fly lead in, the socket is almost at the base of the generator body so you have to bend right over and in fact it’s easier to tilt the generator back over to get the plug in. Poor design there.

Anyway. well see how long it lasts on 4 litres of petrol: my SDMO lasted 11-12 hours on 7 litres but had no economy mode. As I sit here about 2 hours after starting it I can hear it outside and it is definitely much quieter, and a sound meter app on my phone says 54db at about 7 metres. However it is ‘missing a beat’ constantly, as if it is about to start being starved of fuel or air. It’s not affecting the charging at all and my SDMO used to do this, but only once or twice per use. This is doing it every few minutes and it could be simply the engine running in, I’ll wait and see.
It fits in front of the front seat but only just, but it is lighter when filled with petrol than my SDMO was when empty. Champion state 25kg but it really doesn’t feel anywhere near that.

So, as long as it runs without any problem, and uses roughly the same amount of petrol for each battery cycle, then for £369.99 I am very happy indeed. I’ll keep you updated of course 🙂

**Quick update: it’s been running now since 19:30, that’s almost 8.5 hours and the charging routine is about where you’d expect it to be. However for the last couple of hours the engine is running almost permanently as if it’s about to cut out, faltering for a beat every few seconds. Although it’s a very quiet engine, that ‘stuttering’ is incredibly irritating. It only does it in economy mode at low power draw, so my guess would be that the economy mode setting is too low. I could use a teeny bit of choke and see if that helps, or simply set it to run faster, there must be an adjustment on the carb. I’ll wait and see how long it gets out fo one tank of fuel first then adjust it and try again later, to compare fuel consumption.